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November 2, 2022James Corden has admitted “inadvertently” using material by fellow comedian Ricky Gervais as part of a routine on The Late Late Show.
During a monologue about Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover he made a joke strikingly similar to one Gervais made in 2018 on his show Humanity.
It was delivered, he said, “obviously not knowing it came from him”.
Gervais later deleted a response in which he said one of Corden’s writers probably “came up with it” for him.
While there has been the usual reaction of comments and memes on social media, one question you might be wondering is can you – legally – take someone else’s joke?
Laura Trapnell from Paris Smith solicitors has told BBC Newsbeat that a joke could be protected either as a literary work, if the comedian wrote it down, or a dramatic work if it was performed.
The jokes also have to be substantially alike – so what was said?
“When you see Elon Musk talk about Twitter he does this thing where he goes, ‘Well, it’s the town square’,” ran Corden’s joke.
“But it isn’t. Because if someone puts up a poster in a town square that says ‘Guitar lessons available’ you don’t get people in the town go, ‘I don’t want to play the guitar’. Well that sign wasn’t for you it was for somebody else, you don’t have to get mad about all of it.”
Now let’s compare it with the Ricky Gervais version.
“That’s like going into a town square, seeing a big noticeboard and there’s a notice – ‘guitar lessons’ – and you go ‘but I don’t want guitar lessons’ – fine, it’s not for you then, just walk away, don’t worry about it.”
But after being called out online, Corden said he told the joke “obviously not knowing it came from [Gervais]”.
